Conference iosg::all-in-1_v30

1272.0. "System Distribution Lists incomplete after Gold-M" by COMICS::BARHAM (Norbert:) Wed Aug 19 1992 16:55

ALL-IN-1 2.4, VMS 5.3-2

I have an annoying customer who insists I ask this question even though I 
said the answer would be upgrade VMS :-

Customer has a customization which allows users to create system distribution
lists if they have OA$ADMIN identifier. Problem is that in certain 
circumstances, new versions of the .wpl file are created in OA$SYSTEM_LISTS
rather than appending to the existing version 1 file.

To be more precise :-

If they create a new list on form DLEDIT, if they enter 
'I'<down arrow><return>, it writes a file to OA$SYSTEM_LISTS as expected. 

However, if they create another one, enter a few names and then Gold-M SMD
(or SOM etc), it writes to OA$SYSTEM_LISTS at this point. They then select
some addresses from SMD and when they then return to and exit from form
DLEDIT, it writes a new version 2 file to oa$system_lists rather than
adding to the original list in the version 1 intermediary file.
Thus they end up with a list containing just those addressees from the SMD 
and lose their initial entries (before they typed Gold-M). 

The code on form DLEDIT does a

TEXT_FILE OPEN/APPEND DL #EMFILENAME

which I believe should create a new file if it doesn't exist or append to
an existing file, which is not happening - it creates a version 2. Or rather,
it only creates a version 2 on their 5.3-2 systems but works fine on their
5.4-3 systems which run the same customization. Thus I suggested he upgrades
VMS on each of his 22 5.3 nodes which didn't go down too well, but I believe
as this seems to be a known solution that you will suggest the same.
Strange thing is, the same users can edit existing system distribution lists
which implies they definately have correct write access to oa$system_lists.

His question anyway is, do the engineers know of any change from 5.3-2 to
5.4-3 that would cause the code to not recognise the existance of a version 1
file already in oa$system_lists (e.g are identifiers like OA$ADMIN handled
differently) ? Apparently this is a big problem for them and as they're a 
BIG customer I thought I'd ask and get in trouble :-)

Thanks

Clive

    Clive,
    
    The files in OA$SYSTEM_LISTS are .DIS files not .WPL files.
    
    After that point in your note I couldn't follow it sure I ended up
    with multiple copies of the .DIS file but it always appeared to do
    an APPEND and the lower versions got purged away when PURGE_LIMIT was
    reached.
    
    Sorry but I don't understand.
    
    regards,
    
    Andrew.D.Wicks